It feels kind of odd to write those words, as I grew up on an island on the west coast of Norway that is primarily known for fishing and offshore supply boats. But fishing kind of sucks to be honest. And before I get a lot of angry emails from fishing enthusiasts, I feel I need to clarify that I'm talking about fishing in video games.

Why this sudden burst of hatred you might ask? Well for the last few weeks I've been playing Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. And as part of the Single Player Caravan quests, one of the things you need to do is to catch and deliver fish for the caravan. The quests require you to do a god awful mini-game where you have to watch the fishes swim aimlessly around the ponds, while you carefully watch the lure for any sign of a bite. When you first get a fish interested, the window you have to press is ridiculously small. And it gets even worse if the fish you need to get is one of the larger ones, as the window is smaller and their bite will throw you into another mini-game where you need to button mash to be able to pull the creature on shore.

There are things you can do to ease the experience a bit, but that does not excuse the fact that these idiotic side quests exist in the first place. They do not add to the Monster Hunter experience in any way and they should have been left behind in the previous installments. As always you get 50 minutes to finish the quest. Fair enough, but then they also throw in a Monster for good measure and of course he'll gladly ruin your experience even more. How many times do I have to tell you Zamtrios, I'm not here for you this time!!

Has there ever been a fishing sidequest that people actually enjoyed? I remember spending far too much time at the Fishing Pond in Ocarina of Time, but I can't remember enjoying it. I was a bit of a completionist back then as new games were few and far between. Hyrule was such a cool place to spend time anyway.

There! I got that off my chest. Anyone else have a similar experience?

I enjoyed watching supergreatfriend's fishing endeavors in his Deadly Premonition LP, but I highly doubt that the actual playing part would have been fun to do.

Torchlight 2 had a fishing mechanic that, to be honest, I don't remember anything about at this moment. Additionally, I think I fished once or twice back in the day in WoW gaining no real satisfaction out of it. On the other hand, I remember Wii Play having a fun little fishing game that I played with my nephews and niece and it was quite neat.

Hm, not in MH, the fishing there has always been easy to me, and if there's a bonus boss I'll just kill it while I'm there for parts. It's certainly not a fun minigame, but no more taxing/annoying than any other gathering so I just divert my attention slightly more towards whatever it is I'm watching while I'm playing. I appreciate the idea behind pushing you to engage in mechanics you might otherwise ignore like fishing, egg delivery, and hunting of herbivores, but I do agree that the execution becomes needlessly cumbersome when saddled with the MH quest-structure. I'm pretty sure I hated fishing in Twilight Princess.

i remember loving the fishing in Ocarina of Time (though it was frustrating trying to get the big one).

MH is just innocuous and easy to me so it just seems like background noise to the rest of the game. Granted I haven't done much of it yet.

i have never had to fish outside of like the one fishing quest you need to do in all MHs

Me too, I find it incredibly unsatisfying.

Oh, you mean in a game. Yep, then too.

I've been playing for over 100 hours. Never had to fish once.

But yeah, it does suck. At least it can be avoided.

@brendan: Hehe, Not the biggest fan myself

@starvinggamer: @ripelivejam: @djkommunist: @sravankb:

You can't bypass it completely though. Not if you want to upgrade the kitchen skills to the max

I've never had a bad experience fishing in video games.

@itwongo: Have you ever had a good one?

Has there ever been a fishing sidequest that people actually enjoyed?

Why have it as a side quest when it could be all that you do! I loved the Fisherman's Bait games back in the day even though they made me slightly terrified of the sea because of occurences like this. Imagine playing that as a young teenager with no internet to spoil all the cool stuff for you!